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Sub-anchor: Brexit: A look at how Britain got to this point

CCTV.com

06-24-2016 10:26 BJT

The debate about the UK's membership in the European Union has been long-running.

Calls from within Britain to leave the European Union have been pretty loud since the moment it joined in 1973. Two years later, a referendum was held on UK membership of what was then the "European Economic Community." 67% voters chose to stay.

But Europe remained a deeply divisive issue throughout the 1980s, specially with Margaret Thatcher's conservative party, in fact is one of the reasons she was forced to resign in 1990.

A couple of years after that European leaders signed a Maastricht Treaty and that created the modern day EU. Prime Minister John Major defeated a campaign for a referendum on the treaty but only just.

First of all to the late 90s, Tony Blair's labour party is in power and his government opted out to join the Euro currency.

Well the talk of the 2000 was all about the EU constitution to update and strength the union's governing framework. But this caused an uprole with French and Dutch voters rejecting it in referendum.

The Watertown Lisbon treaty replaced it and ratified by British in 2008 but without a referendum and this is when we really see an intensified calls in Britain for its withdrawal from the EU.

In 2010, the conservatives under David Cameron was back in power with a new generation of more new Euro skeptical lawmakers. This is also the height of the Euro zone debt crisis.

Remember those bailout for Greece, Portugal, Iceland and Cyprus and under huge internal party pressure, Cameron pledged to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the EU and hold a referendum on membership after the next election.

Winning a surprise majority in 2015, David Cameron knew that he had to make a good on his promise. So the next year he spent in frantic talks with other European leaders and don't forget this is when the European migrant crisis is intensifying and then this February,

Cameron annouces he's made a deal to bring more powers back home. Among the concessions, a limits on benefits for  EU migrants living in UK.

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